In some instances, material can be placed in apposition to bone to promote healing. For example, various procedures, such as a bone graft, utilize bone and/or bone marrow harvested from a patient to fill a void and/or to facilitate healing. Accordingly, in some instances, it can be beneficial to remove bone and/or bone marrow from an anatomical region to prepare a grafting material.
In an exemplary application, grafting material can be used during a surgical procedure, such as a bone alignment, osteotomy, fusion procedure, fracture repair, and/or other procedures where one or more bones are to be set in a desired position and bone fusion is desired. Such a procedure can be performed, for example, on bones (e.g., adjacent bones separated by a joint or different portions of a single bone) in the foot or hand. In one example, a procedure can be to correct an alignment between a metatarsal (e.g. a first metatarsal) and a cuneiform (e.g., a first/medial cuneiform), such as a bunion correction. An example of such a procedure is a lapidus procedure. In another example, the procedure can be performed by modifying an alignment of a metatarsal (e.g. a first metatarsal). An example of such a procedure is a basilar metatarsal osteotomy procedure.